{"id":901,"date":"2013-07-05T02:22:19","date_gmt":"2013-07-05T02:22:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shailiza.com\/blog\/?p=901"},"modified":"2013-07-05T02:22:19","modified_gmt":"2013-07-05T02:22:19","slug":"901","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/shailiza.com\/blog\/expert-opinion\/901\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Make the Decisions That Will Define You – By Jeff Haden"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently on LinkedIn I came across this<\/a> post by Jeff Haden – about choosing the harder path. It\u00a0instantly\u00a0clicked with me. In a professional world, you will most certainly come across moments when you will have to make choices.\u00a0Choices that could be very minor to something significantly major.\u00a0You may not necessarily know it, yet one day when you look back and connect the dots – you realize why you chose the path you chose; which will then come to define you.<\/p>\n

1) Effort creates its own reward<\/strong>.
\nThe hard choice usually requires the most effort and the greatest personal investment on your part:\u00a0And when you put in the time, you learn more, grow more, and achieve more. Always choose to work harder. It always pays off.<\/p>\n

It almost sounds like a cliche. But it’s true. You may have to work longer, harder. But in the long run – you’ll be glad you put in that effort<\/em>.<\/p>\n

2) Luck is occasional, but intent lasts forever.<\/strong>
\nLuck in today’s day and age is purely opportunity meeting your preparation.\u00a0Luck matters but it’s the intent that counts.\u00a0He gave an excellant example what he meant by this<\/em>:
\n“We’ll go ahead and ship this… if we’re lucky the customer will never notice the problem.”\u00a0(Almost everyone who has worked in software or manufacturing has decided to let a quality problem go\u00a0so they can meet a ship\/release date and hopefully avoid the cost of rework. Sometimes you get lucky\u2026and sometimes you don’t.)<\/p>\n

While it’s painful to make the, “I’m sorry, but we’re going to be a day late but we found a quality\u00a0problem we need to take care of,\u201d call, it’s a lot worse to answer the, “How could you ship us\u00a0this garbage?” call.<\/p>\n

3) The angel lies in the details.<\/strong>
\nShortcuts, high level decisions, quick fixes… sometimes they work out, but they also mean you lose the\u00a0chance to spot other problems, identify other solutions, or find different ways to improve. “Quick and easy” creates an illusion of success. Effort and application \u2013 and a willingness to do what others\u00a0are not willing to do \u2013 builds the foundation for lasting success.<\/p>\n

4) Hard choices build outstanding reputations.<\/strong>
\nStaying late to complete a project, making a tough call to a customer, tackling an employee issue head-on,\u00a0biting the bullet and taking responsibility when you make a mistake… you don\u2019t have to do any of them.\u00a0In a crisis there are always easier options.<\/p>\n

But there is usually only one right option — even if it’s the least attractive option.<\/p>\n

We all admire people who sacrifice, who compromise, who stand tall in the face of adversity \u2013 so do the right\u00a0thing, even if the right thing is the hardest thing, and in time you may become someone other people admire.<\/p>\n

5) The hard choice is always binary.<\/strong>
\nIt’s easy to convince yourself that a black-and-white situation is actually gray. Usually it’s not:\u00a0Needing to fire the employee who doesn\u2019t fit; needing to bypass a senior employee for promotion for a person\u00a0less tenured but more deserving; needing to call investors to let them know results are falling short of\u00a0forecast\u2026 you can talk yourself into thinking there are reasons not to make the hard decision, but in the end\u00a0you’re just rationalizing.<\/p>\n

Usually there are a host of wrong answers, and one right answer. Think about a tough decision you face. You can probably list a number of easy answers \u2013 and one very difficult choice. Bite the bullet and pick the hard choice.<\/p>\n

– Link to the original\u00a0article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently on LinkedIn I came across this post by Jeff Haden – about choosing the harder path. It\u00a0instantly\u00a0clicked with me. In a professional world, you will most certainly come across moments when you will have to make choices.\u00a0Choices that could be very minor to something significantly major.\u00a0You may not necessarily know it, yet one day […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[104,128,131,203,244,245,499,622,623],"class_list":["post-901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-expert-opinion","tag-choice","tag-decisions","tag-delivery","tag-haden","tag-jeff","tag-jeff-haden","tag-solution","tag-work","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/shailiza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/shailiza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/shailiza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shailiza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shailiza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/shailiza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/shailiza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shailiza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shailiza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}